Steamengines in 18thcentury

Steam Engines in 18th-Century Britain: A Quantitative Assessment
Author(s): John Kanefsky and John Robey

Source: Technology and Culture, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Apr., 1980), pp. 161-186
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press and the Society for the History of
Technology
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3103337
Accessed: 08-02-2018 11:23 UTC
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Steam Engines in 18th-Century Britain: A
Quantitative Assessment
JOHN KANEFSKY AND JOHN ROBEY
In recent years much interest has been focused on the question of

the provision of power in the Industrial Revolution in Britain,
especially on the period around the end of the 18th century. Lord's
misleading and incorrect statements about the number of engines
built by Boulton and Watt, and the supposed near-monopoly of
engine construction enjoyed by that firm, have now been firmlyi
disproved.1 Just over ten years ago, a tentative assessment by John
Harris of the number of steam engines built in the 18th century
published in History suggested that a possible total of 1,330 might be
conservative.2 Since then Harris has revised his estimate to over 2,000
in the light of the work of Duckham on the Scottish coalfields,3 that of
Allen on the early Newcomen engine,4 and from correspondence with
one of the present authors, though his suggestion that over half the
steam power employed in Britain before 1800 was in coal mines
probably overstates the case.5
DR. KANEFSKY, a research assistant with the British National Coal Board, has recently
completed a doctoral dissertation on the diffusion of power technologies in the 18th
and 19th centuries. DR. ROBEY, a founder of the Moorland Publishing Company, is the
author of numerous papers on mining history and industrial archaeology.
'John Lord, Capital and Steam Power (London, 1923), pp. 166, 176; A. E. Musson and
Eric H. Robinson, 'The Early Growth of Steam Power," Economic History Review, 2d
ser. 11 (1959): 418-39; and in their Science and Technology in the Industral Revolution
(Manchester, 1969), chap. 12.
2John R. Harris, "The Employment of Steam Power in the Eighteenth Century,"
History 52 (1967): 133-48.
3Baron F. Duckham, A History of the Scottish Coal Industry, Volume One: 1700-1815
(Newton Abbot, Devon, 1970).
4L. T. C. Rolt and John S. Allen, The Steam Engine of Thomas Newcomen (Hartington,
1977); John S. Allen, "The Introduction of the Newcomen Engine from 1710 to 1733,"
Transactions of the Newcomen Society 42 (1969-70): 169-90, 43 (1970-71): 199-202, 45
(1972-73): 233-36.
5John R. Harris, "Skills, Coal and British Industry in the Eighteenth Century,"History
61 (1976): 167-82, esp. 170. The proportion of colliery engines in our totals is under 40
percent (see table 6 below), and though this probably understates the position slightly
the true share is unlikely to be more than just over 40 percent.
? 1980 by the Society for the History of Technology. 0040-165X/80/2102-0008$01.90
161
162 John Kanefsky and John Robey
In his original article Harris made a plea for a detailed study of

individual engines to be undertaken. The need for such a study was
twofold: the importance of having some statistical or factual base
from which to assess the extent to which steam power was taken up by
the 18th-century economy, and the firm refutation of the monopoly
of Boulton and Watt. In a recent article on the background factors
behind the spread of steam power in the 18th century, Eric Robinson
put the issue thus: "Already Harris's figures are being quoted, quite
contrary to the author's intention, as though they possessed a degree
of accuracy quite unattainable at the present time from published
sources. Before we can discuss, with any tolerable hope of reliability,
the diffusion of steam power, even in Britain, a great deal of basic
research still remains to be done."6
Due to the ever-increasing number of detailed local studies now
being made, and with the not inconsiderable aid of a computer in the
process of checking and analyzing the data, it is now possible to
undertake such a survey. This article is the result of some years of
compilation by the authors. It inevitably owes a great deal to Harris's
pioneering paper, and though we have referred to his totals several
times, this was done for the purposes of comparison and not in a spirit
of criticism. His article is a model of the astute use of scanty data. In
the last ten years or so, however, new sources of information have
added greatly to our knowledge of the period, and it is now possible to
document over 2,100 individual engines built in the 18th century. It is
therefore now feasible to form some conclusions about the numbers
and distribution of steam engines built before 1800, though a
definitive listing will never be possible.
We have recorded, in as much detail as is practicable and
commensurate with the often-scanty data on individual engines, all
steam engines built in the 18th century for which evidence is available,
whether of the Savery, Newcomen, or Watt types, or variants of these.
The sources used included insurance records, estate papers, maps,
company records, and newspapers, though inevitably we were forced
to rely heavily on secondary sources and especially published ones.
For Watt engines the main source used was the Catalogue of Old
Engines in the Boulton and Watt papers in Birmingham Reference
Library, amended as necessary from local data. Recently, however,
Jennifer Tann has made a comprehensive study of the Boulton and
Watt papers. She has established that the Catalogue includes many
secondhand engines and has revised downward the total of Watt
6Eric H. Robinson, "The Early Diffusion of Steam Power,"Journal of Economic History

34 (1974): 91-107, esp. 106.
Steam Engines in 18th-Century Britain 163
engines erected up to 1800.7 We also received a great deal of

information and assistance from other researchers in this and related
fields who generously made available the fruits of their own work.8
We listed the details of each engine on computer cards under
eleven headings: the date of the engine; its type; the county in which
it was erected; the industry it worked in; its purpose; who designed or
built it; its power capacity; the cylinder diameter and stroke (the latter
to the nearest foot); and, when this was known, what subsequently
happened to the engine. In most cases several components of this
information were not available, and for many engines we have only a
location and the industry in which it was used; sometimes even these
are not known.
In recording these data, arbitrary decisions as to which of two
conflicting pieces of information were to be used were sometimes
necessary. In the main, however, the criteria involved in assigning
dates, locations, and the like were self-dictating, governed by the
nature of the sources. In a considerable proportion of the records the
date given is the one when the engine was first reported or when it
was ordered, the starting date being unknown. This is especially true
with Boulton and Watt engines, where the firm's records yield the
date of the order, but where it is less easy to establish when the engine
started work. We have also adopted the original use of an engine as
our standard, even when it spent more time performing a different
task, in order to eliminate the double-counting problems which would
have been caused by attempting to list all the jobs for which a
particular engine was used. This study is principally one of engine
building rather than engine utilization, for it would have complicated
our task hopelessly to have tried to follow every engine thoughout its
working life. Thus, if an engine was built to pump water over a
waterwheel and later converted to rotary motion, for example, only
the former use is listed.
For the same reasons, while we have included secondhand engines

in the lists for checking purposes, they are not included in the various
7Correspondence with Tann. She now puts the figure of engines built up to 1800 at
451, as against our total of 478 and the previous best estimate of 496 by Dickinson.
8We particularly wish to thank in this regard Donald Anderson, David Bick, Stanley
Chapman, Louis Cullen, Joan Day, Baron Duckham, Roger Flindall, John Goodchild,
Bill Harvey, David Jenkins, Peter Lead, John Orbell, Trevor Raybould, Philip Riden,
Jennifer Tann, Barrie Trinder, Chris Whatley, Chris Williams, and Lynn Willies. We
would also like to thank the many record office staff who helped to find material,
especially the staffs of Birmingham Reference Library, Dudley Public Library, the
Guildhall Library, Leeds City Libraries, the North of England Institute of Mining
Engineers, the Scottish Record Office, the Central Library, Sheffield, the Shropshire
Record Office, and the Staffordshire Record Office.
164 John Kanefsky andJohn Robey
totals presented here. If every move of the materials of an engine
were to be counted as a new installation, a very distorted picture
would be drawn of certain counties, most notably Cornwall where a
great deal of information on engine moves has survived, where
engines were used on as many as four different sites in twenty years,
and where most Boulton and Watt engines were moved at least once.
On the other hand, of course, many of the engines we have taken as
being new in the absence of information to the contrary were
doubtless secondhand, but this is inevitable when reliance has to be
placed on sketchy data.
A further difficulty arises in distinguishing between secondhand
engines and rebuilds. In some cases where substantial modifications
were made to an existing engine, as for instance Smeaton's rebuild of
the Wheal Busy engine, this has been taken as a new engine.9 Where
the rebuild was in essence a move, however, as for instance when the
cylinder of an existing engine was used with new timberwork on a
different site, this was regarded as such and was not counted. This
approach is not without problems. In the 18th century almost all
engines were built up on site from materials assembled from many
places, and it is usually impossible to tell their origin. When the
timberwork of an old engine was used with a new cylinder on a
different site, should this count as a new or a secondhand engine? In
the final analysis each case had to be examined and a decision made.
Though some of these may be open to objection, the policy adopted is
probably the least unsatisfactory overall.
For location purposes we have taken the counties as they were
before the local government reorganization of 1974,10 putting
modern conurbations in their respective counties with the exception
of London. The capital was for practical purposes a unit, though
divided between Middlesex and Surrey. In any case enough detail
does not exist to locate a large proportion of London engines more
precisely without intimate knowledge of the 18th-century city and the
industrialists who worked there. This is an area where some detailed
research would be invaluable. By and large, however, there were few
problems in assigning engines to their counties. Apart from some
early Coalbrookdale cylinders for which only the name of the
purchaser survives, only about a dozen engines cannot be located.
Recording the maker of an engine often set problems similar to
those encountered with rebuilt and moved plant. Most Newcomen
9D. Bradford Barton, The Cornish Beam Engine (Truro, 1965), pp. 20-22.
10A major reorganization of the British counties took place in 1974, with many
boundary changes and the creation of entirely new counties. To avoid confusion and
possible mislocation it was decided to keep to the old counties in this study.
(and, indeed, Boulton and Watt) engines were not really built by any
one person or works but were rather the product of several different
concerns. For over half the engines, moreover, we have no details of
the suppliers of parts or the erector. This problem also manifests itself
elsewhere. In one-fifth of the installations, the type of engine
employed is not known and we have no details of the job performed
by a similar proportion of engines. Likewise the power and size of the
cylinder are not usually recorded, though most Boulton and Watt
engines are documented in the Catalogue of Old Engines and the other
Boulton and Watt papers. The sample of other engines, though
probably slightly skewed by the tendency for the more notable
engines to be documented, is reasonably representative.
II
It must be stressed that the figures presented here are only interim
ones. More engines and more or different details of known ones are
continually coming to light, and we do not claim to have surveyed
every scrap of evidence. With this caveat, though, it is felt that despite
the obvious imperfections in the data, the general picture is unlikely
to be markedly altered by further work. It is nonetheless true that the
list is stronger in some areas than in others, and inevitably tends to
overstate the share of total 18th-century production built by Boulton
and Watt. It is not possible to forecast the likely final total with any
confidence at this stage, but it may well be something of the order of
2,400-2,500 engines; a supplement to this paper may be more
definite as to the complete tally.
The case of Shropshire illustrates the problem. Here there are two
independent contemporary estimates which suggest that there were
about 200 engines in the coalfield area in 1800.11 Counting individual
engines, we have logged only 154 engines for the county as a whole
for the century. Nine of these were in the lead-mining area to the west
of the county, while many were early engines which would have been
replaced by the end of the century. Thus, of those documented,
perhaps only 120-30 were in existence in 1800. On this basis there is a
deficiency of seventy or eighty engines in our records, and while the
figure of 200 may be an overestimate it seems likely that there are
about fifty engines missing from the list. This is an extreme example,
caused by the sudden mushrooming in the numbers of small winding
engines in the last decade of the century.12
The Northumberland and Durham coalfield is also badly
1 Barrie S. Trinder, The Industrial Revolution in Shropshire (Chichester, West Sussex,
1973), pp. 158-59.
12Ibid., p. 171.
documented for the last few years of the century, Raistrick's paper
stopping with the introduction of the Boulton and Watt engine.13 We
have only eighty engines for the two counties after 1780 as against 150
before that date, whereas most counties saw more installations in the
last twenty years of the century than in the previous eighty (as will be
seen later). Whereas John Curr, the famous Sheffield coal viewer,
estimated that there were thirty or forty engines in use pumping
water onto waterwheels to wind coal in the Northeastern coalfield
area in 1797,14 our records show ten, and this does not take pumping
and direct winding engines into account. The deficiency for the
Northeast may therefore be even greater than that for Shropshire.
For most other areas, however, our totals exceed previous estimates,
both contemporary and modern. For Cornwall, probably the most
intensively studied region in the country, Barton and others have
suggested an aggregate of about 155 for the century,15 while we can
document 173 not counting rebuilds or reerections of old engines on
new sites.
It is not possible to publish the full computer lists here for reasons
of space. In any case, since these are probably of less general interest
than the conclusions and summaries drawn from them, we have
attempted to draw out the main points and summarize the data in
tabular form. To this end we have adopted seven headings, as follows:
(1) chronological; (2) type of engine; (3) maker/designer; (4) location
by county; (5) industry; (6) purpose of engine; and (7) physical
dimensions. For the same reasons we have not given any detailed
references to the sources of information used either for individual
engines or groupings; the sheer volume of such material would be
inappropriate for a summarizing article. We will be happy to supply
details of the sources used for particular areas or industries, and to
assist in the tracking down of particular engines where this is possible.
Equally, we would be grateful to receive any data on engines which
have not been documented in print or which we might have missed,
with a view to the compilation of a supplement in the future.
III
Chronology
The greatest problem associated with the analysis of the chronology

of steam engine building in the 18th century is that the date when
many of the engines started work has not been recorded. Our best
13Arthur Raistrick, "The Early Steam Engine on Tyneside," Transactions of the
Newcomen Society 17 (1936-37): 131-63.
"4John Curr, The Coal Viewerand EngineBuilder'sPractical Companion (1797; reprint ed.,
London, 1970), p. 34.
15 Barton, chap. 1.
information is that the engine was in existence at a certain date. There

is sometimes an indication as to how soon after installation the first
record of an engine is, but these clues cannot be regarded as reliable
evidence. The lag between construction and first recording of an
engine was not consistent, depending on the industry and the source
of the information. In general, the gap between building and
recording was longest in collieries. This was largely because the earlier
an engine was built the more likely it was to be on a colliery, but also
because nonmining engines tended to be in more populous districts
and more noteworthy. Where the first reference is from a map or a
sale deed, the engine is obviously more likely to have been an old one
than when the first mention is on an insurance policy. The time
elapsing between erection and recording of engines whose first
reference is in topographical and other contemporary printed works
varied tremendously depending on the source. It is difficult to put an
average figure on the length of time between building and recording
because of these variations, but five years is probably an overestimate.
The difference tended to lessen as the century progressed, as a result
of the influences noted above.
The net result of this tendency is to bias the chronological

distribution of steam engine building slightly toward the end of the
century. This bias is not strong, however, since most engines-some
70 percent-can be dated exactly, and the shift of the rest is not large.
For seventy engines, however, no details survive other than that they
were of 18th-century origin, while a further seventy-eight are only
recorded as having been in existence in or shortly after 1800. Perhaps
half the latter were built by 1800, but whatever the exact number the
total is not significantly affected. A difficulty arises with the fifty
engines included in William Brown's list of colliery engines (made in
1769) but not recorded earlier. If these are spread out over the 1750s
and 1760s, however, the apparent kink in the graph of engine
building (fig. 1) in these decades is to a great extent ironed out.
When allowance is made for all these complications, the trend of
engine building over the century is a very smooth curve, tending to
accelerate slightly in the 1790s. On semilogarithmic axes it is almost
straight after the 1730s, signifying a very steady rate of diffusion. The
relationship between these figures and John Harris's estimates is a
fairly constant one, as table 1 shows. While his figure for 1780 is
rather lower than the other two in comparative terms, this can be
explained by the relative dearth of figures for the middle period in
comparison with the earlier and later parts of the century at the time
when he was writing, a situation which has now been rectified to a
great extent.
The breakdown of engine building by decades is shown in table 2.
This table requires a little explanation. The figures in brackets refer

to engines about which there is doubt as to whether they were built.
Often these are cases where it is possible that the engine is a duplicate
of another already listed; others represent proposals that may not
have materialized. While it is not possible to say how many of these
CUMULATIVE TOTAL
2000
1500
en
o 1000 DECADE I )TAL
500
0 .rFF-T
1700 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 1 800
YEAR
FIG. 1.-18th-century engine building by decades
TABLE 1
TOTAL ENGINE BUILDING TO KEY DATES
Survey 1733 1780 1800
Harris...... 60 360 1,330

(.61) (.51) (.61)
Present ..... 98 711 2,191
SouRCE.-John R. Harris, "The Employment of Steam P

Eighteenth Century,"History 52 (1967): 133-48, esp. pp.
computer printout.
NOTE.-Key dates are 1733, expiry of Savery pat
introduction of rotary motion; 1800, expiry of Watt p
century.
TABLE 2
18TH-CENTURY STEAM ENGINES: CHRONOLOGICAL

SUMMARY
Cumulative
No. Built Total Possible
Decade in Decade (Known) Total
To 1710 ....... 4 (2) 4 4

1711-20 ....... 32 (3) 36 40
1721-30 ....... 47 (2) 83 100
1731-40 ....... 53 (3) 136 150
1741-50 ....... 96 (3) 232 250
1751-60 ....... 87 (2) 319 370
1761-70 ...... 191 (4) 510 580
1771-80 ...... 201 (10) 711 800
1781-90 ...... 388 (12) 1,099 1,300
1791-1800 .... 1,014 (56) 2,113 2,500
Possibly 18th
century ...... 78 2,191
Total ....... 2,191 2,191 ...
SouRcE.-Computer printout.
NOTE.-Figures in parentheses refer to possible engin
uncertain.
possible engines were actually built, it seems likely that more than half
were.
The bottom row of the table refers to engines for w

reference to their existence shortly after 1800; p
two-thirds of these will have been set to work before our deadline at
the end of 1800. We have chosen this date rather than the end of June
when the Watt patent expired for two reasons. In the first place, the
end of the century is a much more logical and natural place to end;
second, it would be virtually impossible to establish whether the
engines built in 1800 were started before the end of June. The
adjusted figures in column 3 of the table represent the totals of engine
building to the end of each decade as known, though the final figure
for 1800 may be nearer 2,500 engines. Column 4 is a tentative attempt
to suggest the possible final breakdown. Figure 1 expresses the
information in columns 1 and 3 graphically.
Type
The analysis of the type of 18th-century steam engines is relatively

straightforward up to about 1780. Before that date it is reasonably
safe to assume that all engines were Newcomen engines unless there is
specific evidence that they were Savery or Watt engines. The Savery
type was never very widely used, being confined to a few very early
examples around 1700, occasional unsuccessful attempts to introduce
modified or improved versions in the middle of the century, and a

rather larger number built in the 1780s and 1790s to return water to
the waterwheels of textile and other factories.16 The latter were fairly
commonplace, but it is difficult to say exactly how numerous they
were due to the absence of data distinguishing them from the small
"common" engines which were frequently installed for the same
purpose. Over twenty can be definitely identified, but the true total
may well have been over fifty.
After the mid-1780s the position becomes very complicated, with
more and more different variations on the Newcomen principle being
introduced, and especially as the steam engine was being increasingly
used to produce rotary motion directly. This was first done in 1779 by
James Pickard in Birmingham and Matthew Wasborough in Bristol.17
James Watt built his first rotary engine with the sun-and-planet
device he devised to circumvent Pickard's 1780 patent of the
crank in 1782.18 From then it becomes impossible to say, with-
out direct evidence, if a factory engine was being used to recycle
water over a wheel or to drive machinery directly. Even in collieries it
is wrong to assume that an engine was a pumping engine, since the
Newcomen engine was rapidly adapted to winding coal by means of a
crank and drum. Steam power was in fact first used for this purpose
in the 1760s at Hartley colliery in Northumberland, where
experiments were conducted to wind coal by means of a cam attached
to the pump rods of an engine.19
For Watt engines there are fewer problems, since the Boulton and
Watt papers differentiate between pumping and rotary engines and it
is usually easy to sort out which type was referred to. Not all Watt
engines are listed in the Catalogue of Old Engines, however, and there
were a considerable number of "pirate" engines of various sorts built
by competitors of Boulton and Watt in defiance of their patents. From
the 1780s, too, other types were introduced, though by far the
majority of engines remained of the Newcomen type even in the
1790s. The latter were so numerous that they became known as
"common" engines and were not regarded as noteworthy unless
especially large or unusual.
Any century totals of engine types are bound to be approximations
16Musson and Robinson, Science and Technology, pp. 396-406; David T. Jenkins, The
West Riding Wool Textile Industry: A Study in Fixed Capital Formation (Erdington, Wiltshire,
1976), p. 85.
17Reginald A. Pelham, The Old Mills of Southampton (Southampton, 1963), pp. 17-19;
John Farey, Treatise on the Steam Engine (1827; reprint ed., Newton Abbot, Devon, 1971),
1:403-10.
l8Farey, 1:423-25.
1'Ibid., 1:408; Robert L. Galloway, Annals of Coal Mining and the Coal Trade, 2
(1894, 1904; reprint ed., Newton Abbot, Devon, 1971), 1:277-78.
in view of the above and of the fact that there are no details of the type
of 498 engines, or 23 percent of the total. It would, however, appear
that about two-thirds of 18th-century steam engines were of the
Newcomen type, while 25 percent were Watt engines, including
piracies; 3 percent were Savery engines; and the remaining 5 percent
various minor alternatives. Those for which the data have survived
can be charted as in table 3.
Some explanation of each of these types of engine is necessary. The
Savery engine was not really a steam engine in the way this is meant
today, being in essence a form of suction pump in which steam was
condensed in a closed vessel and water sucked up into it by the partial
vacuum thus caused; steam pressure could also be used to force water
to a higher level. The Newcomen engine was an atmospheric engine.
That is to say, the pressure of the atmosphere, rather than steam
pressure, did the work, the steam being used simply to drive the air
out of the cylinder and then be condensed, creating a partial vacuum.
The pressure of the atmosphere then forced the piston down and the
pump rods, connected to the other end of a rocking beam, were lifted,
so raising water. A spray of cold water into the cylinder condensed the
steam, and the engine was very inefficient due to the large amount of
fuel wasted in heating and cooling the cylinder.
The Watt engine solved this problem by condensing the steam in
a separate vessel, enabling the cylinder to be kept permanently hot.
This was its prime difference from the Newcomen principle, though
many other important improvements of detail-including
TABLE 3
18TH-CENTURY STEAM ENGINES BY TYPE
Number First
Type Built Percentage Recorded
Savery ..................... 33 1.5 1698

Newcomen (pumping) ...... 936 42.7 466 1710
Newcomen (rotary) ......... 86 3.9 J 1779
Watt (pumping) ............ 162 7.4 1774
Watt (rotary) ............... 316 14.4 24.7 1782
Pirate Watt ................ 63 2.9 1780
Compound ................ 18 .9' 1782
Bull ....................... 16 .7 1790
Twin cylinder .............. 31 1.4 45 1789
High pressure .............. 6 .3 1799
Symington ................. 21 1.0 1787
Other ..................... 5 .2J 1787
No data ................... 498 22.7 1776
Total .................... 2,191 100.0 ...
SoURcE.-Computer printout.
steam-jacketing to keep the cylinder hot, double-acting cylinders, and

parallel motion to ensure that the piston moved in a straight
line-were devised by Watt. A large part of the superior efficiency of
the Watt engine was, however, the result of advances in engineering
techniques made by other people, notably John Wilkinson's boring
machine, which enabled much better cylinders to be made. Whatever
the source of the improvements, though, it cannot be denied that the
Watt engine was a far more sophisticated machine than the
Newcomen engine, even though the latter had been improved
considerably over the century.
Other forms of engine were also produced from the 1780s. The
compound engine, invented by Jonathan Hornblower, used the steam
in two cylinders consecutively, though it ran into problems over Watt's
condenser patent. The Bull engine dispensed with the beam, the
piston being coupled directly to the pump rods, giving slightly more
efficient but less adaptable and less accessible operation. Francis
Thompson and others produced engines with two atmospheric
cylinders having pistons at opposite ends, making both strokes
working strokes, and giving high power and smooth operation at the
expense of costlier construction. Trevithick introduced his
high-pressure engine, the first to use the pressure of steam rather
than that of the atmosphere to move the piston, at the end of the
century. This made more compact design possible, but since it
depended for its success on the availability of boilers capable of
withstanding much higher steam pressures than those used by
Newcomen or Watt, it was not generally adopted until later. The
Symington engine had two pistons in one cylinder, the lower acting as
the air pump to exhaust the steam. This was really a means of
circumventing Watt's condenser patent, and was, nonetheless,
popular in his native Scotland.
Other variants included the Heslop engine, which had two
cylinders on opposite ends of the beam to obtain smoother motion for
winding purposes, and which was really a form of two-cylinder engine
similar to the Thompson design. Another was the Sadler engine, in
which a second cylinder was really a condenser. None of these
variants saw very extended use. Since the Newcomen and Watt
engines represented the best practice in terms of simplicity and
cheapness, on the one hand, and sophistication, on the other, the bulk
of steam engine production was made up of these two types.
Maker/Designer
Steam engines were rarely built by one organization or individual in

the 18th century; more often they were the product of several
ironworks, carpenters and stonemasons, and an engineer or erector.

The cylinder might come from one foundry, the rest of the ironwork
from another. The timberwork and stonework for the framing and
engine house would be done by local craftsmen or by the employees
of the purchaser, and the erection of the parts to form a working
engine would be supervised by a professional erector who was in
effect a consulting mechanical engineer. The boilers, moreover,
might come from yet a further different source.
Before the opening of the Soho foundry in 1796, for example,
Boulton and Watt merely supplied the plans, some of the more
complicated metal parts such as valves and nozzles, and the expertise
to erect the machinery and make it work. They did, however, act as
middlemen for the supply of boilers, cylinders, and so on, and usually
insisted that the customer pay them and not the ironworks who was
actually making the parts.20 The customer was responsible for
obtaining the other parts locally, a situation which sometimes caused
misunderstandings between the firm and its clients.21
It is therefore misleading to discuss the "builder" of an 18th-century
steam engine in modern terms. Several firms and individuals would
be involved in any one engine, all of whom were in a sense the builder.
This semantic confusion is reflected by the diverse group of men and
firms who are recorded as steam engine makers in the century. Some,
like James Watt, were principally designers; others, such as John
Wilkinson, were the men who made the parts; while yet others, like
William Brown, the famous Tyneside coal viewer, were mainly
erectors of engines; some, especially in the 1790s, combined several of
these functions.
Where two people were involved in the construction of an engine,
we have generally taken the designer or erector, rather than the
foundry which made the parts, as the engine's builder. We have
recorded separately when the cylinder was made by Coalbrookdale or
the Carron Company, since the first of these made a large proportion
of early cylinders and the latter many of those used in Scotland.
As regards the output of individual concerns, the chief problem is
lack of information. Only for Boulton and Watt, and for some minor
contributors, is anything like the full production known. In total we
know the builder or designer of less than half the steam engines built
in the 18th century. The Soho firm was responsible for more than ten
20Jennifer Tann, "Suppliers of Parts: The Relationship between Boulton and Watt
and the Suppliers of Engine Components, 1775-1795," Transactions of the Birmingham
and Warwickshire Archaeological Society 86 (1974): 167-77.
21Richard L. Hills, Power in the Industrial Revolution (Manchester, 1970), pp. 172-74.
times as many engines as the firm with the next highest recorded
output, Bateman and Sherratt, and more engines can be definitely
ascribed to Boulton and Watt than to all other producers, illustrating
the poverty of our knowledge of rival firms.
Boulton and Watt produced about 478 engines (22 percent of the
total) according to our figures, and 451 (just over 20 percent) by
Tann's latest revision. This is an impressive performance by any
standards, especially so in view of the dispersed character of the
market and the high capital cost of their product. This output,
however, would not have been possible without the kind of
organizational structure described above. Before the building of Soho
Foundry they simply could not have made even the major metal parts
for so many engines.
There is little point in discussing in great detail the output
hierarchy of the other makers, since the figures are so incomplete. It
must, however, be stressed that there were a considerable number of
firms and individuals engaged in the trade at one time or another
over the century: we have recorded over ninety, and there were
doubtless many others for whom no record survives. In the final
analysis, though, table 4 (which lists the known totals of the major
builders) is the least useful breakdown of engine building.
County
The distribution of steam engines according to the county in which

they were erected varies considerably between the three periods (up
to 1733, 1734-80, and 1781-1800) as a result of changes in both the
industrial structure of engine building and the relative importance of
the different counties as industrial areas. It is also affected to a certain
extent by the variable nature of the information available, some
counties being better documented than others. These variations are
of a fairly obvious nature, and can easily be seen from table 5, which
breaks 18th-century engine building down by counties and by the
three subperiods used above. The spread of the engines is
surprisingly wide. Only ten of the forty-three English counties did not
see the erection of at least one steam installation by 1800, though less
than half had over ten examples. In Wales only two areas had any
number of engines: the lead and coal mining district of Denbigh and
Flint, and the South Wales coalfield. In Scotland the engines were
concentrated in the Midland valley and on the Ayrshire coalfield.
Only seven Scottish counties had more than ten engines, and between
them these had 85 percent of the 231 engines built in that country.
The counties with ten or more engines, indicating the adoption
of steam power on some scale, were, with the notable exceptions of

London and Cornwall, chiefly the coal mining and textile areas (see fig.
2). Cornwall had special needs for steam power in its metal mines and
was a consistently heavy user throughout the century. In terms of
numbers used it was probably fourth behind Lancashire, Yorkshire,
and Shropshire; but from the point of total power used and
contribution to the development of steam technology, it was as
important as any. London was the fifth or sixth largest user of steam
power and was important for the wide variety of uses to which it put
the engines. A large number of different manufactures were carried
on in the capital, and the serious shortage of water power there meant
a considerable market for small rotary engines for breweries,
foundries, and the like, apart from the pumping engines needed by
the waterworks companies.22
TABLE 4
18TH-CENTURY STEAM ENGINES BY MAKER*
Number
Maker or Designer Built Period
Boulton and Watt ............. 478t 1774-

Bateman and Sherratt ......... 43 1782-
John Wilkinson ............... 38 1780-95
William Brown ................ 32 1752-78
John Smeaton ................. 26 1755-86
William Symington ............ 24 1787-99
Francis Thompson ............ 24 1773-99
Parrot/Sparrow ................ 22 1715-38
Coalbrookdale ................ 18 1742-
Edward Bull .................. 16 1790-98
Jonathan Hornblower, Jr. ...... 16 1784-98
Jonathan Hornblower, Sr ....... 13 1747-77
Joshua Wrigley ................ 13 1780-99
Richard Trevithick ............ 12 1795-
Newcomen/proprietors of patent 10 1712-32
Adam Heslop ................. 10 1790-
Others ....................... 185 ...
No data ...................... 1,211
Total ....................... 2,191
*As known. The true totals are likely to have been much higher for many
of the makers listed here.
tTann's figure of 451 Watt engines is probably more accurate.
22See the Catalogue of Old Engines for an indication of the widespread uses of steam
power in the capital.
TABLE 5
18TH-CENTURY STEAM ENGINES-COUNTY TOTALS
Up to 1734- 1781-
County 1733 80 1800 Total
Bedford ................ ...

Berkshire ............... ... ... 2 2
Buckingham ..............
Cambridge .............. ... ... 1 1
Cheshire ................ ... 3 37 40
Cornwall ............... 6 80 87 173
Cumberland ............ 1 11 16 28
Derbyshire .............. 3 34 41 78
Devon ................. ... ... 4 4
Dorset .................. ... ...
Durham ................ 12 60 38 110
Essex ................... ... ... 1 1
Gloucester .............. ... 40 26 66
Hampshire . ......... ..... ... 4 4
Hereford .....................
Hertford .............. ...........
Huntingdon .....................
Kent . ................ ... ... 3 3
Lancashire .............. 1 25 240 266
Leicester ................ 1 6 7 14
Lincolnshire ............ ... ... 4 4
London ................ 7 20 109 136
Monmouth ............. ... ... 11 11
Norfolk ................. 1 3 4
Northampton ........... ... 1
Northumberland ........ 14 88 37 139
Nottingham ............. 2 5 34 41
Oxfordshire ............ ... ... 3 3
Rutland ................
Shropshire .............. 5 40 111 156
Somerset ............... ... 5 8 13
Stafford ................ 10 29 111 150
Suffolk ................. ..... ...
Surrey .................. ... 1 3 4
Sussex .................. ... ...
Warwickshire ........... 17 16 25 58
W estmorland ........... ... ...... ...
Wiltshire ............... ... .. 1
Worcestershire .......... 2 4 24 30
West Riding ............ 2 41 228 271
East Riding ............ ... 6 10 16
North Riding ......... ... 3 4 7
176
TABLE 5 (Continued)
Up to 1734- 1781-
County 1733 80 1800 Total
Anglesea ............ ....... 1 1

Breckonshire ........... .........
Caernarvon ............. ... ... 2 ... 2
Cardigan ............... ........
Carmarthen ............. ... 1 ... 1
Denbigh ................ 1 9 10
Flint ................... 5 9 16 30
Glamorgan ............. 2 10 21 33
Merioneth .......................
Montgomery ............ ......
Pembroke ........... ....
Radnor ................. ... ..
Aberdeen ............... .....

Angus .................. ... ... 6 6
Argyll .................. ... . . . 1 1
Ayrshire ................ 3 9 23 35
Banffshire .............. ....
Berwickshire ........... ... .
Buteshire ............... ... ... 2 2
Caithness ............... ...
Clackmannan ........... ... 2 8 10
Dumfries .............. ... 1 6 7
Dunbarton .............. ... 1 1 2
East Lothian ............ 1 ... 7 8
Fifeshire ................ ... 10 19 29
Inverness ............... ............
Kincardine .............. ...
Kinross ................. ......
Kirkcudbright ........... ... ... 1 1
Lanarkshire ............. ... 7 38 45
Midlothian .............. 3 3 29 35
Morayshire ............. ....
Nairnshire .............. .........
Orkneys ................ .........
Peebles ................. .. ...
Perthshire ........... ...... .1 1
Renfrewshire ........... ... 1 17 18
Ross & Cromarty ......... ......
Roxburghshire ............. ... ...
Selkirkshire ............. ......
Shetlands ............... ...
Stirling ................. ... 8 11 19
Sutherland .............. ...
West Lothian ........... ... 6 6 12
Wigtown ...................... ...
Northern Ireland ........ ... ... 6 6

Southern Ireland ........ ... 1 10 11
No county .............. 1 22 7 30
SOURCE.-Computer printout.
177
N
50 Miles
50 Miles
FIG. 2.-Counties with ten or more 18th-century steam engines
The relative importance of the different counties in the market for

steam power changed considerably over the century. In the early part
of the century the coalfields, especially the northeastern one,
dominated; later the textile counties became the largest markets, even
allowing for underrecording in Shropshire, Northumberland, and
Durham. The change was most marked in Lancashire, which was
transformed from a relatively minor user to the largest single market
in the last twenty years of the century.23 The West Riding of
Yorkshire also experienced this phenomenon to a lesser extent, but
here the demand was much more broadly based, with coal mines and
ironworks contributing to the increase in numbers in the last quarter
of the century.24
In Scotland, too, the development of the textile trades in the
Glasgow area meant a considerable demand for steam power in
Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire, but here the coalfields were
developed later and the textile industry was nothing like as large or as
rapidly developing as it was in England.25 In total, the Scottish demand
was relatively minor; both Lancashire and the West Riding used a
larger number of steam engines than the whole of Scotland.
The Welsh distribution was little changed over the century as there
was little need for steam power in the small and rurally based woollen
industry; almost all the engines were in the coal and iron counties.
The distribution of the power within these counties did change, with
the development of the coke iron industry in the later years of the
century.26 Even with its new demand for steam power, the Principality
remained a minor user, with just over 3 percent of the total.
Industry
The distribution of 18th-century steam power plant by industry

and industry group is much as one might expect: large concentrations
in certain key trades but a wide spread over many other sectors, with
no less than 300 outside the main areas of use in the mining, textile,
and metalworking trades. By far the largest share of the total was, of
course, in mining, with nearly half the engines in this sector. Most of
23Musson and Robinson, "Growth of Steam Power," passim; Sun and Royal
Exchange insurance registers in the Guildhall Library, London.
24John Goodchild, "On the Introduction of Steam Power into the West Riding," South
Yorkshire Journal 3 (1973): 6-14; Jenkins, pp. 83-85.
25Duckham (n. 3 above), p. 363; Henry Hamilton, The Industrial Revolution in Scotland
(1932; reprint ed., London, 1967), p. 135.
26D. Morgan Rees, The Industrial Archaeology of Wales (Newton Abbot, Devon, 1975),
pp. 219-20.
these were in collieries, with no less than 828 engines, or 38 percent of

the total erected, being in coal mines. The rest were spread over
various kinds of metal mining with a few in salt mines. Twenty-one
percent were in the textile industries, chiefly in cotton and woollen
mills, and a further 11 percent were in the metal trades. The other
engines were spread over a large number of industries, with
significant concentrations in flour milling (fifty-seven engines), canals
(forty-four engines), and waterworks (thirty-six engines). Most major
industries saw at least one application of steam power in the century.
Before 1780, of course, relatively few engines were installed in
manufacturing industry: only just over 100 of the 700 plus engines
erected up to that date were outside the mining sector, and
twenty-two of these were in waterworks. After 1780 the balance was
changed with the application of steam power to drive mills either
directly or through waterwheels. Of roughly 1,500 engines built
between then and the end of the century, only just over one-third
were in mines (the figures being just under 500 mining applications
and nearly 1,000 nonmining ones). The growth of the textile trades
was chiefly responsible for this transformation, with nearly as many
engines being built for textile mills as for mines between 1780 and
1800. Table 6 shows the industry distribution in the three periods and
the century totals and percentages; the changes over time will be
apparent from this and the details of the uses to which the engines
were put.
Purpose
The range of jobs performed by steam engines in the 18th century

bears an obvious close resemblance to the pattern of the industries in
which they worked. By far the largest category of use was for
pumping water from mines, no less than 871 engines, or 40 percent of
the total, being so used. For nearly 20 percent of the engines,
however, we have no details of the purpose. These were spread over
many industries, though nearly half were in the textile trades, where
they were used either to return water or waterwheels or to drive the
machinery directly.
At least 150 and probably 200 engines were used in conjunction
with waterwheels. The first instance of this combination may have
been as early as the 1730s, at Lloyd's metal works in Birmingham,
though this is doubtful.27 One was certainly in use at Guns Mill in the
27Arthur Raistrick, Quakers in Science and Industry (1950; reprint ed., Newton Abbot,
Devon, 1968), pp. 119, 132.
TABLE 6
18TH-CENTURY STEAM ENGINES BY INDUSTRY
UP TO 1733 1734-80 1781-1800 TOTAL
Individual Group Individual Group Individual Group Individua

INDUSTRY GROUP Industry Subtotal Industry Subtotal Industry Subtotal
M ines ............ .. 89 482 ... 493
Coal............ 79 376 373 . 828
Lead ............ 4 29 35 ... 68
Tin ............ 4 8 10 ... 22
. . .
68 71 . 141
Copper ......... 2 ..
Other ............. . .
.. . 1 4 5
Textiles ............ 1 ... 468
Cotton .......... . . . 276 . 276
Woollen ......... 133 ... 134
. .
Other .......... 59 . 59
..
.5.
Metal working ..... 51 211

. .
Iron ............ 1 39 177 ... 217

. .
6 4 .... 10
Brass/copper .... . . I
Lead ............. . .. .
. . . 13 ... 13
Other .......... 6 17 . 23
Foods .............. 5 107
Flour mill ....... 2 55 ... 57
Distillery ......... 2 18 ... 20
Brewery ........ 26 . 26
. .
. .I
Other .......... "1 8 . 9
Miscellaneous ....... 3 34
Canal ........... 6 38 .. 44
Waterworks ...... 3 19 14 .. 36
Oil mill .......... 4 14 .. 18
2 10 .. 12
Pottery .......... 11
Chemical works 2 9 ..
8 .. 8
Dockyard .......
1 12 13
Paper mill ........ ..
Paint/colors ..... 7 .. 7
Other ........... ".
16 . 16
5 ... 15
Experimental .......
No data .......... ... . . .
33
33 ... 56
Total ......... . 98 . 613 ... 1,480 ...
Forest of Dean by 1743, and another was built around the same time
to return water to one of the waterwheels at Coalbrookdale.28 Before
1775 the chief area of use was in ironworks, to ensure the water
supply for the wheels which drove the bellows of the furnaces. After
that date they were, however, increasingly used in textile mills to
insure year-round working while retaining the smooth motion
imparted by waterwheels. These engines were generally small, cheap
engines, often of the Savery type built by Wrigley and others.29
From 1780, however, there was an alternative use for the steam
engine with the employment of driving machinery directly using
either the crank or Watt's sun-and-planet gears. Rotary engines
quickly became commonplace in mines, mills, and ironworks alike,
wherever rotary motion was needed but water power was unavailable
or unreliable. By the 1790s large numbers of rotary engines were in
use in many industries for a wide variety of tasks, though water power
was generally preferred whenever it was available, as it gave steadier
motion and meant far lower working costs. The exceptions to this rule
were mainly in trades such as ironworks, where a constant supply of
power was vital. Table 7 demonstrates the wide scope of the uses to
which steam power was put in the 18th century.
TABLE 7
18TH-CENTURY STEAM ENGINES BY PURPOSE
First
Purpose Number Percentage Recorded
Pumping from mine ..................... 871 39.8 1706

Recirculating water ...................... 149 6.8 1743
Pumping to waterworks, 54.3
canal, etc. ............................. 77 3.5 1714
Blast furnace ............................ 93 4.2 1770
Winding at mine ......................... 128 5.8 1762
Textile mill .............................. 204 9.3 1785
Turning machinery ...................... 103 4.7 25.3 1779
Grinding corn ........................... 83 3.8 1779
Rolling mill ............................. 19 .9 1780
Other ................................... 17 .8, 1763
Experimental ............................ 25 1.1 1698
No data ................................. 422 19.3 ...
Total ................................. 2,191 100.0 ...
SoURcE.-Computer printout.
28Cyril Hart, The Industrial History of Dean

Trinder (n. 11 above), p. 161.
29Musson and Robinson, Science and Technolog
Dimensions
The dimensions of 18th-century steam engines are relatively

infrequently recorded. While data on the cylinder diameter survive
for 910 engines, in only 607 cases has it been possible to establish the
power generated or calculate it from the rate and depth of pumping.
A large proportion of these figures-71 percent of the power figures
and 50 percent of those for cylinder size-are for Boulton and Watt
engines, which tends to distort the pattern they show. Moreover, it is
questionable how representative the sample of non-Watt engines is,
since there is an inevitable tendency for the larger and therefore more
noteworthy engines to be recorded more frequently than the smaller
and less spectacular examples. It is impossible to gauge the strength of
this bias, though it is probably not very strong since a considerable
number of the smaller engines have also been recorded, especially the
Watt type. The discrepancy between the surviving figures and the
true averages is probably greater for power figures than for cylinder
size.
Of the 910 engines for which we have figures of cylinder size, some
452 were Watt engines and 458 of various other types. The average
diameter of the former was 26.9 inches and of the latter 39.7 inches;
overall the mean was 33.3 inches. Assuming this figure is accurate, it is
still misleading since it conceals variations over the century and
between industries. Mining engines, for example, tended to be
significantly larger than those in manufacturing. It is therefore
necessary to break the data down into decade totals, as shown in table
8.
TABLE 8
STEAM ENGINE CYLINDER DIAMETERS (in Inches)
ALL ENGINES WATT ENGINES
DATE Number Average Maximum Number Average Maximum
1698-1710 ........ ...

1711-20 ....... 13 20.8 32
1721-30 ....... 25 25.9 35
1731-40 ....... 31 31.8 42 ... ...
1741-50 ....... 37 41.6 60 ... ...
1751-60 ....... 44 46.6 70
1761-70 ....... 90 48.8 75 1 18.0 18
1771-80 ....... 90 44.8 76 43 37.5 66
1781-90 ....... 207 30.2 120 145 27.1 63
1791-1800..... 373 27.1 63 263 25.0 63
Total........ 910 33.3 ... 452 26.9
A clear trend can be seen from this table. In the years up to 1780
the pursuit of higher power and the improvements in cylin-
der-making techniques led to increasingly large cylinders (up to
76 inches in diameter) being used in engines in both coal and metal
mines. This has a corresponding effect on the average. After that date
cylinder sizes fell, and cylinders of 50-60 inches became more normal
for large pumping engines. The introduction of the double-acting
version of the Watt engine was largely responsible for this. Few places
required more power than the 150-plus horsepower that a 63-inch
engine of this type could generate, and where more power was
required two engines were generally preferred. Common engines
could also now produce over 100 horsepower as a result of advances
in engineering techniques. The tendency was toward slightly smaller
and better-made engines, though the Manchester cotton mill owner
William Thackeray did experiment with an engine reputed to be 120
inches in diameter.30
More important in the decline in the average size of steam engines
was the change in the composition of the demand for steam power.
After 1780 the increasing share of textile mills and other
manufacturing establishments reduced the mean considerably, since
the typical engine in these trades was 20-30 inches in diameter. Thus
the average fell from 49 inches, in 1761-70, to 27 inches in the 1790s,
after having risen continuously in the first 70 years of the century.
The trend in horsepower figures is broadly similar to that for
cylinder sizes, though this is hardly surprising in view of the close
relationship between the two. Since the power generated by an engine
of a given size tended to increase over the century due to better
engineering techniques and the improvements Watt introduced, the
decline in power was both less marked and later in time than the fall
in cylinder size. Of the 607 engines with known power data, the
average output was 26.1 horsepower, and there was little difference
between the Watt and "common" engines, despite the fact that the
latter were larger. The figure for Boulton and Watt engines is 434
engines with an average of 26.6 horsepower; for others it is 173 and
24.9 horsepower. It is noticeable that Watt engines are more powerful
per inch than others. This is in part a reflection of the data, since the
Watt engines are usually recorded in terms of power generated, while
Newcomen engines tend to have the net power delivered recorded. In
consequence, one should not read too much into these figures. Table
9 breaks the horsepower figures down by decades.
30Brotherton Library, Leeds, Marshall MSS, 57, p. 1.
TABLE 9
HORSEPOWER AVERAGES
ALL ENGINES WATT ENGINES
DATE Number Average Maximum Number Average Maximum
1698-1710........ ...
1711-20 ....... 7 4.6 8 ......
1721-30 ....... 5 11.0 20 ...
1731-40 .......... ...
1741-50 ....... 6 25.7 47 ... ...
1751-60 ....... 4 21.8 52
1761-70 ....... 15 21.7 50 1 6.0 6
1771-80 ....... 66 34.5 103 39 39.8 103
1781-90 ....... 159 29.8 190 125 30.8 190
1791-1800 ..... 345 23.7 172 269 22.8 172
Total........ 607 26.1 ... 434 26.6 ...
Conclusions
Three main conclusions can be drawn from this study. In the first
place, Boulton and Watt did not have anything like the monopoly of
steam engine construction Lord suggested and which was still
commonly believed until the myth was exploded by Musson and
Robinson, Harris, and others. Indeed, even in the last quarter of the
century, their share of the market was under 30 percent. Though this
is still an impressive performance, the figures reinforce our belief that
the importance of the Watt engine has been generally exaggerated.31
Second, steam power was employed in the 18th century to a much
greater extent than has hitherto been realized. The probable number
of engines built in the century was nearly double Harris's original
1967 estimate of about 1,330 engines. A putative total of 2,500
represents a very rapid adoption of any new invention in the 18th
century, especially in view of the abundance of water power at that
time, the continuing increase in water mill numbers, and the much
higher cost of operating a steam engine. Our view of its diffusion
must therefore be revised.
Finally, the study highlights the crucial role of steam power in the
18th-century economy. The Newcomen and Watt steam engines
31Even taking most unrealistic assumptions, the most recent analysis, by von
Tunzelmann, cannot put the social saving generated by the Watt engine at more than
0.11 percent of the 1800 GNP; see G. N. von Tunzelmann, Steam Power and British
Industrialisation to 1860 (Oxford, 1978), chap. 6, esp. p. 149.
enabled a whole range of new industries and industrial areas not

dependent on water power to develop swiftly, especially in the last
decade of the century. As a dynamic factor the importance of these
sectors can scarcely be overstated. Rapid expansion of the output of
coal, iron, tin, and copper, and the development of the urban textile
centers, all depended to a great extent on the availability of steam
power, and it was exactly these areas which were the crucial "leading
sectors" of the Rostovian model. It is true that water power continued
to provide the lion's share of Britain's fixed power requirements long
into the 19th century, a point made by A. E. Musson in a recent article
where he stated that "It is not generally appreciated that in 1800
steam power was still in its infancy, that in the vast majority of
manufactures there had been little or no power-driven mech-
anisation, and that where such mechanisation had occurred water
power was still much more widespread than steam . . . water
wheels long continued to be built and used, while most manufacturing
operations remained largely unmechanised until after 1870."32
Indeed, the whole subject of the amounts of power in use in Britain in
the 18th and 19th centuries, and of the shares of steam, water, and
wind power in the totals, was the subject of the recent Ph.D.
dissertation of one of the present authors.33 It is, however, also true
that water power could not have provided the necessary power to
drain the northeastern collieries or the metal mines of Cornwall, and
that urbanization would have proceeded at a much slower pace if the
textile industries had been tied to water resources.
Much work still remains to be done on steam power in the 18th
century. We have indicated some areas and counties where our
knowledge of the steam power used is rather incomplete, and as yet
relatively little work has been done on international comparisons.34 It
is, nonetheless, clear that the steam engine was even more important
to the 18th-century economy than has generally been realized.
32A. E. Musson, "Industrial Motive Power in the United Kingdom, 1800-70,"

Economic History Review, 2d ser. 29 (1976): 415-39, esp. 416.
33John W. Kanefsky, "The Diffusion of Power Technology in British Industry
1760-1870" (Ph.D thesis, University of Exeter, 1979).
34Though this gap has been filled to a large extent by recent work: see Rolt and Allen
(n. 4 above), pp. 70-81; G. J. Hollister-Short, "The Introduction of the Newcomen
Engine to Europe" Transactions of the Newcomen Society 48 (1976-77): 1-24; and Jennifer
Tann and Michael J. Breckin, "The International Diffusion of the Watt Engine,
1775-1825," Economic History Review, 2d ser. 31 (1978): 541-64.

Steamengines in 18thcentury

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Steamengines in 18thcentury

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Steam Engines in 18th-Century Britain: A Quantitative Assessment

Author(s): John Kanefsky and John Robey

In recent years much interest has been focused on the question of

In his original article Harris made a plea for a detailed study of

6Eric H. Robinson, "The Early Diffusion of Steam Power,"Journal of Economic History

engines erected up to 1800.7 We also received a great deal of

For the same reasons, while we have included secondhand engines

The greatest problem associated with the analysis of the chronology

information is that the engine was in existence at a certain date. There

The net result of this tendency is to bias the chronological

This table requires a little explanation. The figures in brackets refer

o 1000 DECADE I )TAL

FIG. 1.-18th-century engine building by decades

TOTAL ENGINE BUILDING TO KEY DATES

Survey 1733 1780 1800

Harris...... 60 360 1,330

SouRCE.-John R. Harris, "The Employment of Steam P

18TH-CENTURY STEAM ENGINES: CHRONOLOGICAL

To 1710 ....... 4 (2) 4 4

Total ....... 2,191 2,191 ...

The bottom row of the table refers to engines for w

The analysis of the type of 18th-century steam engines is relatively

modified or improved versions in the middle of the century, and a

18TH-CENTURY STEAM ENGINES BY TYPE

Savery ..................... 33 1.5 1698

Total .................... 2,191 100.0 ...

steam-jacketing to keep the cylinder hot, double-acting cylinders, and

Steam engines were rarely built by one organization or individual in

ironworks, carpenters and stonemasons, and an engineer or erector.

The distribution of steam engines according to the county in which

of steam power on some scale, were, with the notable exceptions of

18TH-CENTURY STEAM ENGINES BY MAKER*

Boulton and Watt ............. 478t 1774-

Total ....................... 2,191

18TH-CENTURY STEAM ENGINES-COUNTY TOTALS

Bedford ................ ...

Anglesea ............ ....... 1 1

Aberdeen ............... .....

Northern Ireland ........ ... ... 6 6

FIG. 2.-Counties with ten or more 18th-century steam engines

The relative importance of the different counties in the market for

The distribution of 18th-century steam power plant by industry

these were in collieries, with no less than 828 engines, or 38 percent of

The range of jobs performed by steam engines in the 18th century

18TH-CENTURY STEAM ENGINES BY INDUSTRY

UP TO 1733 1734-80 1781-1800 TOTAL

Individual Group Individual Group Individual Group Individua

Metal working ..... 51 211

Iron ............ 1 39 177 ... 217

Total ......... . 98 . 613 ... 1,480 ...

18TH-CENTURY STEAM ENGINES BY PURPOSE

Purpose Number Percentage Recorded

Pumping from mine ..................... 871 39.8 1706

Total ................................. 2,191 100.0 ...

28Cyril Hart, The Industrial History of Dean

The dimensions of 18th-century steam engines are relatively

STEAM ENGINE CYLINDER DIAMETERS (in Inches)

ALL ENGINES WATT ENGINES

DATE Number Average Maximum Number Average Maximum

1698-1710 ........ ...

Total........ 910 33.3 ... 452 26.9

30Brotherton Library, Leeds, Marshall MSS, 57, p. 1.

ALL ENGINES WATT ENGINES